eBay has launched a Guest Buyer program as described in this Newsflash article. eBay got back to me with answers to some questions I had asked involving issues raised on the eBay Discussion Boards. First, there was fear from sellers that certain bidders they had blocked from bidding on their items would use the Guest program to get around the block. eBay spokesperson Kim Rubey explained, "Existing users will be blocked from the guest flow - they will be asked to sign in so this is not a way around buyer blocks. We match via email address." So it's not foolproof, but neither is the blocked bidding feature to begin with.

The second issue was whether a Guest Buyer could leave feedback. My own feeling is that Guests should not be able to conduct transactions they completed as a Guest. Once they register, they should be treated like a regular member, of course, but in my opinion, they should not be able to retroactively leave feedback on Guest transactions. Here's what Kim had to say about it:

"We want to encourage guest buyers to register to enjoy the full benefits of eBay membership and they are prompted to upgrade at the end of their transaction. In many ways we are doing progressive registration by collecting only the information we need for that transaction and then allowing them to upgrade very easily at the end. Once they do so they have all the user privileges including feedback on all transactions as long as it is within the regular feedback time window from date of transaction."

It's interesting that Guests can not go through third-party checkout systems, any thoughts on whether this is a great inconvenience (or disadvantage) to those sellers?